Changes to Google Chrome
During its Google I/O conference in May 2019, Google announced upcoming updates to its Chrome browser. In particular, one of Google’s anticipated updates discussed were how first-party and cross-site third-party cookies will be handled with the rollout of Chrome version 76 and any subsequent releases. Google anticipates that these changes will take effect on July 31, 2019.
How We’re Preparing
The AddThis team is proactively making the necessary updates on how we attribute, write, and read cookies ahead of the new browser release. These updates are designed to ensure all AddThis tools will continue to run smoothly when Google releases the updates to Chrome. Here are some of the updates our developers are working on:
- Declaring AddThis third-party cookies as cross-site cookies (SameSite=None) when we set them
- Reading and writing our cookies through secure (HTTPS) calls
- Declaring our cookies as “Secure” in the Set-Cookie header
These updates more clearly state the purpose of the cookies and reinforce their security.
Impact on AddThis Publishers
As a publisher using AddThis tools, no action is needed on your part. Additionally, all of the work our team is doing to optimize our tools will have no foreseeable direct impact on your website(s). However, end users may see temporary changes to our features and tools, such as:
Smart Sorting
The Smart Sorting tool automatically displays the user’s most frequently used social media networks on AddThis Share Buttons when they visit your site, to help maximize sharing. The Smart Sort tool may reset when the user revisits your site for the first time after the release of Chrome version 76.
Related Posts
This tool displays recommended content from your site based on the user’s interests, to help visitors find more great content on your site. As with the Smart Sorting tool, this may reset initially when the visitor comes back to your site after Chrome version 76 rolls out.
We value our publishers and the work they do. While impending changes to Chrome won’t have a large impact on your day-to-day, we wanted to share some of the updates our team is conducting to ensure the tools you trust continually run at optimal performance.
We’ll continue to test and follow Chrome announcements and releases. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team!